Now, that being said, I think there *are* a lot of actually interesting fights in the game. The problem is that they’re mostly towards the back half of the game when you’ve got a bunch of levels on you. Based on what you’ve written here, I don’t think it’s worth you persevering that far; Kingmaker doesn’t change enough by that point to change your mind.

I’ve tried this game early this year, after some patches but before Enhanced Edition. It enraged me. It’s one of those games that surprise you with how good they are, and you go asking people why isn’t it more popular. And then you see why. I loved the first chapter, even didn’t think much of those spiders. But then by the end of the first chapter and especially in chapter 2 it became the most infuriatingly grindy RPG I’ve ever played. As you’ve said, D&D-style systems just aren’t good for PC games. All those numbers are obsured, “+1″ instead of “+5%”, “2d4 + 1d6 per odd HP level” instead of “4-20 for this character”. The map is full of planes, the dungeon layout is unimaginative too, so every fight is a trash fight in an empty space. There’s no tactical challenge cause D&D doesn’t do those. It makes you try the fight to discover that clicking the enemy and drinking potions for tank isn’t enough to win fight, and as there isn’t much you can do apart from that you have to restart and apply all the buffs. In rare cases you have to consider what happened in combat and apply, say, lighting shield. But mostly you don’t cause you just need more raw power, and most buffs are universally good helpful buffs you apply before the combat or in the first round, like alchemist stat buff, Magus sword enchantment, cleric blesses and shields, bard song, barbarian rage…

After I’ve dealt with trolls I was already exhausted by the need to fight the same group of trolls 10 times, doing exactly the same. Then I had no real goal and the sidequests where about running around the same maps, staring at the screen for several minutes while my characters move around in a realisticly slow manner. Then I went around the map, discovering new lands, realizing this game has nothing you’d call town, so it’s all wildreness and dungeons, fighting packs of wolves that get higher and higher level. That’s more unberable than any Ubisoft grinding. I couldn’t comprehend how a beatiful reactive game I saw in chapter 1 – and remember, it had almost no dungeons apart from the spider one, every fight apart from random evadable encounters meant something – turned out into the most boring RPG I’ve ever played. Get into a fight, either win with no losses or utterly loose, reload, prebuff, achieve total victory with no thoughts involved, continue.

Well maybe something was fixed in Enhanced Editor. I still think about trying it from time to time, cause at times it felt like much better game than anything in BG series. But it hurts.